[0.90] KSP-Real-Asteroids Missions and Bodies pack

[jonasrosland]

Hi all!

Long time reader/player, first time poster. Me and two very smart and funny people created a base of an add-on for KSP this weekend as part of the International Space Apps Challenge, and would like to share it with you.

Some info on the International Space Apps Challenge:

Challenge info: https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/asteroids-2025-2100-future-history/

Our project: https://2015.spaceappschallenge.org/project/explore-capture-and-redirect-real-asteroids-in-kerbal-space-program/

What is it?

Short explanation of our add-on it is that we used three mods, CustomAsteroids, Kopernicus and ContractConfigurator, and then built content using these mods.

The content we've created is adding asteroids and missions, based on REAL asteroids (currently not exactly right but close) and REAL missions

What we've added:

Asteroids:

101955 Bennu, AKA 1999 RQ₃₆

Dionysus

90 Antiope

Missions:

Collect Asteroid Science

Crash into Asteroid

Rendezvous with Asteroid

Surface EVA on Asteroid

Why those asteroids?

Because they're cool!

Bennu is currently being evaluated for the ARM mission, and will also be the target for the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Dionysus is fun to add into the game because it has an interesting and challenging orbit.

90 Antiope is a binary asteroid, and can therefore be a fun target for missions where you have to go to both celestial bodies.

Screenshots:

More screens here: http://imgur.com/a/ws9Wb

These are very much a work in progress, we learnt a lot throughout the weekend and are looking forward to adding more content in there.

The add-on can be found here: https://github.com/jonasrosland/KSP-Real-Asteroids under the MIT license.

TODO:

• Figure out if it's possible to stop the spawning of a specific asteroid after it's been spawned once, using CustomAsteroids. We've created Bennu in CustomAsteroids and would like it to only appear once
  
• Create more asteroids like Dionysus and 90 Antiope
  
• Since Bennu also is a binary system (with a much smaller moon), we might create that using Kopernicus as well
  
• Fix the asteroid orbit, mass and rotation data to correspond correctly with the real ones. Right now the settings are close but not entirely correct
  
• See if we can create a version for Real Solar System as well
  
• Fix the missions to work flawlessly
  
• Create an automated tool for creation of Kopernicus configuration files from the data found at http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPCORB.html
  

Let us know what you think!

Edited April 13, 2015 by jonasrosland

[nightingale]

This looks awesome! Congratulations on the release!

[jonasrosland]

This looks awesome! Congratulations on the release!

Thank you, and thank you for creating Contract Configurator, it's an awesome tool!

[hieywiey]

PLEASE do Ida and Dactyl, cause that would be awesome! Although not much is known about Dactyl's shape from Galileo's brief flyby.

[Hotblack Desiato]

nice mod, it looks great.

I guess, the creators of custom asteroids can set some sort of flag-system in order to prevent a second creation of an asteroid.

for the kopernicus-asteroids, how about giving them an custom asteroids moon? this way, the player can actually steal the asteroids moon.

[jonasrosland]

PLEASE do Ida and Dactyl, cause that would be awesome! Although not much is known about Dactyl's shape from Galileo's brief flyby.

That sounds like a great addition, will try it out!

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nice mod, it looks great.

I guess, the creators of custom asteroids can set some sort of flag-system in order to prevent a second creation of an asteroid.

for the kopernicus-asteroids, how about giving them an custom asteroids moon? this way, the player can actually steal the asteroids moon.

Now THAT sounds like fun! Land on an asteroid, steal its moon, and make a mission out of it.

[nightingale]

Note that it's been planned for a little bit, but I added [#184] to Contract Configurator for adding a behaviour for generating asteroids. That may be one solution to the issue of generating multiple asteroids with Custom Asteroids (as well as allowing you to generate asteroids that aren't in solar orbit). Note however that this ties you to the contract system, which you may or may not want.

Oh, and the functionality for generating asteroids via Contract Configurator is technically already available via SpawnVessel, but would require that you create a .craft file for the asteroid.

[jonasrosland]

I think if we were to tie a specific asteroid (like Bennu) to a specific mission (like OSIRIS-REx) that would make a lot of sense, and I'd gladly test things out for you.

Also, SpawnVessel could be fun to play with where you can create alien vessels that may or may not be abandoned, sending out some sort of signal and it's up to you, brave Kerbal, to rendezvous with it and gather science. No idea if that's been done already.

[Bev7787]

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This mod looks really good. Might get it. How much lag does it cause

[hieywiey]

Upon looking for more obscure and interesting asteroids, I found these: 10199 Chariklo, 216 Kleopatra, 624 Hektor (not the horror game, although the name still gives me chills), and 3753 Cruthine. I have put some pictures below.

10199 Chariklo, the Saturn-wannabe asteroid.

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Kleopatra, every dog's dream vacation getaway.

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624 Hektor, a peanut shaped asteroid that flew by Earth.

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3753 Cruthine, a.k.a. "Earth's Second Moon", an asteroid with a very weird orbit.

[jonasrosland]

So, you want more asteroids?

There's now a script called asteroids.py in the scripts folder that reads data from asteroids.csv (created from the JPL database) and automatically generates thousands of asteroids with as accurate data as possible. Use it, and copy the asteroids you want into your Kopernicus library.

TODO:

Create a number of randomly generated textures to use for the asteroids. Anyone feel up for the task?

Have fun

[Thiel]

67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko would seem like an obvious candidate to get added.

[jonasrosland]

67P is a comet, not an asteroid

That's not to say they can't be added, but the scope of the project never included comets.

[jonasrosland]

I just realized that this could be fun to use with the new Ore resource. Let's see what we can come up with!

[Lazy8]

Hi, not sure if anyone is still in this group or if this mod is dead seeing as it hasn't been updated since 2015. I stumbled upon this after reading about the osiris-rex mission NASA is doing and thought it would be cool to have real asteroids in KSP instead of randoms. Like the planets it would let users see the orbits of asteroids and get a sense of where in space they are. This mod sounds super cool and I'm hoping someone is still around to pick it back up and make it current. Maybe even put it on ckan.